This Is What Resistance Looks Like

Posted on Apr 4, 2011

“If Bank of America paid their fair share of taxes, planned cuts of $1.7 billion in early childhood education, including Head Start & Title 1, would not be needed,” Zeese pointed out. “Bank of America avoids paying taxes by using subsidiaries in offshore tax havens. To eliminate their taxes, they reinvest proceeds overseas, instead of bringing the dollars home, thereby undermining the U.S. economy and avoiding federal taxes. Big Finance, like Bank of America, contributes to record deficits that are resulting in massive cuts to basic services in federal and state governments.”

The big banks and corporations are parasites. They greedily devour the entrails of the nation in a quest for profit, thrusting us all into serfdom and polluting and poisoning the ecosystem that sustains the human species. They have gobbled up more than a trillion dollars from the Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve and created tiny enclaves of wealth and privilege where corporate managers replicate the decadence of the Forbidden City and Versailles. Those outside the gates, however, struggle to find work and watch helplessly as food and commodity prices rocket upward. The owners of one out of seven houses are now behind on their mortgage payments. In 2010 there were 3.8 million foreclosure filings and bank repossessions topped 2.8 million, a 2 percent increase over 2009 and a 23 percent increase over 2008. This record looks set to be broken in 2011. And no one in the Congress, the Obama White House, the courts or the press, all beholden to corporate money, will step in to stop or denounce the assault on families. Our ruling elite, including Barack Obama, are courtiers, shameless hedonists of power, who kneel before Wall Street and daily sell us out. The top corporate plutocrats are pulling down $900,000 an hour while one in four children depends on food stamps to eat.

We don’t need leaders. We don’t need directives from above. We don’t need formal organizations. We don’t need to waste our time appealing to the Democratic Party or writing letters to the editor. We don’t need more diatribes on the Internet. We need to physically get into the public square and create a mass movement. We need you and a few of your neighbors to begin it. We need you to walk down to your Bank of America branch and protest. We need you to come to Union Square. And once you do that you begin to create a force these elites always desperately try to snuff out—resistance.

Chris Hedges’ column appears every Monday at Truthdig. Hedges, a fellow at The Nation Institute and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the author of “Death of the Liberal Class.”

““I” got to love the vitriol directed at me because “I” dare questioned the motives
of their heroic essayist, Chris Hedges.”

I don’t want to speak for the “directors of vitriol”, but I’m pretty sure it was “your”
motives they were questioning. Your comment didn’t come off as sound reasoning,
it came off as a rationale for complacency. But don’t take it personally, it’s not by
accident that complacency (and clicktivism doesn’t sub) is a singularly common
trait these days.

Getting together, isn’t that what it’s all about. Getting together to manifest against the banks will be just another crowd to be controlled. It’s asking the herd to break off to form another, smaller herd - but a herd remains a herd, and never really leaves its comfort zone, doesn’t it.

No, you’ll have to go a lot further than that. You’ll have to pull your money out of the system. You’ll have to stop buying their products, watching TV. You’ll have to willingly become poorer. You’ll have to suffer alone, and you’ll have to do it, not for the betterment of mankind, but for yourself. There’ll be no sweet solidarity, no pats on the back or words of commiseration. No friends, please. It will be misanthropic, even crazy, and it will probably kill you. But at least you’ll die on your terms, not the ones handed to you.

Exactly the opposite result is what helps civil disobedience strategy succeed—when it succeeds.
Consider the recent Egyptian uprising. Millions of people gathered peaceably in one place, led by a few young people who had previously received some training in non-violent strategy and tactics in Serbia. What violence that occurred was quelled and prevented by the massive and persistent non-violence, the general mood of mutual care, the determination to resist without conflict and agitation. Such an event could never have occurred if the people had not understood the secret of what they were doing.
Police join protesters, or tolerate them, unless their resistance can be provoked into anger and violence. The secret is: Do not be provoked into violence; do not respond to violence with violence, even if the police try to provoke resistance. Do not resist. As Jesus is rumored to have said: “Love your enemies, etc.” which sounds absurd to violent people—until they experience the creativity of the idea for themselves and give it meaning by experience.
It ain’t easy! But it’s possible—with a little help from people whose hearts and minds are deeply committed to “turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile” etc.

I’m sure that the CEO and shareholders of Bank of America would be delighted if we protested against “Empire” instead of their bank.

Just sayin’.

A couple of Saturdays ago, my wife and I attended the US Uncut National Day of Action at a BOA branch in downtown L.A. It attracted about a dozen people, which was dismal compared to actions in other cities, although there was a pro-union march happening concurrently—a great cause—which probably affected the turnout. As more and more Americans like myself are driven into economic hardship, bankruptcy, poverty, and homelessness as a result of so-called “shared sacrifices” that are being required from us, but not from wealthy individuals and corporations, our numbers will grow.

Prior to that action, I had been conducting a one-person protest at the BOA in downtown Long Beach, CA for several weeks (not every day), carrying a sign and handing out literature to simply raise awareness about the issue of large corporations not paying their fair share in taxes and how it affects middle-class and working-class Americans. The feedback has been 100% positive and supportive.

I’ll be returning there this afternoon. Of course I welcome anyone who wants to join me.

“...how our courts rule…” - I heard a political
operative (Dick Morris?) tell the recent gathering of
Teas’ in DC that a bill he was going to propose to some
House members wouldn’t be challenged by SCOTUS because
he had a “promise” from four or five of them that they
wouldn’t challenge it.

Is this a common occurrence? Justices promising their
allegiance to political operatives? If so, we’re
really in deep shit.

Is there some kind of an infectious disease that causes informed, insightful, and committed protesters “Against Empire”, like Hedges, to go all wobbly in the knees when they get together with pseudo-progressive, pseudo-revolutionary, and multi-threaded “symptom issue” organizations like ‘Prosperity Agenda’, ‘Voters for Peace’, ‘Democracy Rising’ and other distractive and dividing ‘identity issue’ diversions, headed by guys like Kevin Zeese, which protest across broad swaths of separate “symptom problems”—- like; economic oppression, torture, spying, corporate crime, inequality, and even such important issues as anti-war, BUT never demonstrate the vision and focus that Hedges, Parenti, Negri, Chomsky, Bacevich, Zinn, Chalmers Johnson, Taibbi, and so many others understand as a disguised global EMPIRE that is the causal cancer hiding behind and causing all these divisive “symptom issues”?

In this ‘call to action’ Hedges says, “The phrase consent of the governed has been turned by our two major political parties into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs”, and yet the proven insight of Hedges seems not to remember that a single, signal, and seminal “Empire of Illusion” is the pivotal CAUSE of all the TWO-Party “Vichy” deceit and disguise of this Empire in all areas of our domestic and global problems of; imperialist wars, domestic spying, vast economic oppression, ecological destruction, torture abroad, and tyranny at home.

If Hedges, of all people, does not keep his focus and ‘actions’ of civil disobedience on targeting, “like a laser”, on the seminal EMPIRE causing all these separate and conflicting “symptom issues”, then any hope for a true solidarity of action “Against Empire” is in danger of fragmenting into a “Million Points of darkness and confusion”——which is EXACTLY what the global Empire wants to divide and continue to conquer any progressive and solidarity of a unified peoples’ movement “Against Empire”.

Even the kids in the “Gap” countries: like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and the entire swath from N. Africa through the entire Middle East and to the boards of Afpak—- which is now being attacked in accordance with Thomas Barnett’s 2004 Naval War College and national intelligence empire “hot read” book. “The Pentagon’s New Map”, seem to have the innate sense to focus on the one seminal evil of the global Empire—- perhaps because they directly feel the “point of the Empire’s spear in their face”.

But certainly, academics and intellectuals of Hedges’s vision and knowledge of the “Empire of Illusion”, the disguised TWO-Party “Vichy” corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE that would destroy us all in existential rage, must demonstrate an equal commitment to focus clearly and unflinchingly ON EMPIRE as the cause of all these evils.

For as Hannah Arendt warned, based on her painful experience under the Nazi Empire:

“Empire abroad entails tyranny at home”

And we will surely all suffer the later if we do not hang together to confront the former.

lasmog:
“And for those unlikely or unable to attend this protest, consider making a far more mild act of resistance; register with the Green Party or another 3rd party of your choice. I believe that the time has come to abandon the Democratic Party en masse. While this will certainly lead to short term gains for the Republicans, it is the type of shock therapy that this country needs to break our corporate duopoly.”

Absolutely agree. And don’t even consider voting for Obama. Voting for him means abandoning one’s pride and principles. I’m hoping Ron Paul will run, so at least we have a man who wants to end the wars on the ballot. If people want to quibble about his other positions, I say: decide what issues are the most important to you. Do you want the choice to be between Romney and Obama or Huckabee and Obama or Paul and Obama? Cause that scenario seems like the only one on the horizon right now.

today it is typically civil resistance, not civil disobedience. we are resisting the evil policies of the government and actually obeying our conscience… the government is breaking the law, not us. whereas civil disobedience is about breaking an unjust law in order to change it or repeal it…

“Narcisstic injuries, occur… Narcicisstic parents produce dependent children..and we are a nation of addicts if anything else…whose cure seems to found only in social action…”

The problem is that there will be too little resistance to the corporate masters that run this country. I believe 9/11 and the uber-manipulation of the American people has turned us into a nation of political cowards. The Bush Administration and moneyed interests were quick to seize the day and transform America into a place where color-coded scaremongering turned us into pussies….afraid of our own shadows. It made us bullies abroad and wimps at home…..not the kind of people who protest against their masters.

we do not know what acts civil disobedience comprises? does it include massive
labor strikes, taking kids out of schools, not watching movies-tv, or reading any
of their publications?
calling soldiers to desert or leave foreign bases? boycott or picket churches?

if it is true that sacerdotal class controls utterly at least 30mn americans, then,
we may always lose them; since priests only approbate an egalitarian structure
of society and a supremacistic structure of governance.

in u.s., u also have at least 30mn people who’d die and kill others to defend the
‘infallibility’ of u.s. governance and constitution.

so no matter how u disobey ur rulers, 50% of u.s. pop wld strongly oppose any
weakening of the supremacist rule.

it seems that setting up in u.s. a second political party proffers a better way to
oppose banksters, people in movie-tv industry-MSM, ‘educators’, politicians,
judges, cia-fbi-police-army echelons, lawyers, large shareholders.

i live in canada. for the first time ever i am voting for a communist party. the
socialist party we have is pro israel and getting less and less egalitarian! tnx

It’s high time, and a good sign, that one as notable as Hedges now readily admits the political process is moot. Whether one wants to go into the streets or not is another matter. But clearly going into the polling booth is feeding a delusion.

I challenge Mr. Hedges that it is far more important to reject the corporate version of life, than it is to protest for more equity within it. It would be far more effective to stop taking out mortgages, stop signing up for credit cards, stop buying new cars, and stop buying a new miniature telephone every six months.

The big picture lies in asking the question, “I am nothing but an economic actor on the corporate stage?” The issue underlying all of this turmoil is that we have agreed en masse to be the cogs of that machinery. Then we complain when the put the screws down tight!

Carry a sign in the streets if you feel better. But oif you then walk across the street and have lunch on your VISA card, it is all for nothing.

I really applaud Mr. Hedges for beginning to see the light. Beginning to see that the Left/Right political paradigm and political theatre is meaningless. But, that’s only a beginning.

Nothing is going to stand in the way of corporations taking total control of our political process. As each day passes in this 21st Century of “opportunity” I’m surprised it was so easy for Americans to become so fat, lazy and uninvolved.

America has become a nation of “consumers” and “eyeballs” and “business opportunities.” In 2 words, Americans are easy marks. Just show them they can save $400 on car insurance, possess the latest & greatest phone, get cash back on their credit card purchases AND pay no taxes….well then, La Vita e Bella in America!!! Right?

I now know why so many Italian immigrants (during the great wave of immigration in the late 1800 and early 1900’s….over 60%) went back to Italy…...they knew then that America was not a land of opportunity….just a place to make money. Other than that, a lot of what went on and currently goes on in this country simply stinks. Today my Italian relatives can only shake their heads and wonder how it is that America is nothing but strip malls, crumbling highways and (other than a few special places) a nation devoid of any sort of cultural aesthetic. (I have one cousin who says “Your national parks are so wonderful because there are so few of you Americans there to ruin my vacation.”)

In the truest sense, there’s very little to defend about the U.S. today. There’s nothing “special” and certainly nothing exceptional going on here. This is why Americans simply won’t protest for/against anything…..because there’s NOTHING to fight for.

I have suggestion for the protest’s theme song, “Aenema” by Tool. Here’s my favorite verse:

Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your Prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and
Fret for your car.
It’s a bullshit three ring circus sideshow of freaks.

But, yes, I do believe Mr. Hedges is on the right track, particularly in advocating the break up of the banks. Very few large corporations are efficient. In many ways they are even more inefficient than big government because they simply cannot function without screwing their customers and then begging for or stealing money from the government.

Small to medium-sized businesses are the way to go. We need much more stringent laws and regulations governing corporate mergers and acquisitions. Those acquisitions are where the money goes—right in the pockets of the executives. Afterward, the merged company has no money for good customer service or workers.

Big business is incredibly inefficient. No doubt about it. Break ‘em up.

“A child will often succumb to the pulling desire to tear others down in order to elevate themselves. Children do this before they understand there’s a better way.”

A neurotic child will,.. a child deprived of love and the comfort of healthy social contact or nurturing from his mother, as John Bowlby, and Harry Harlow well documented.

Narcisstic injuries, occur… Narcicisstic parents produce dependent children..and we are a nation of addicts if anything else…whose cure seems to found only in social action…

Every day can be a day of resistance..a refusal, to deposit your money into the Robber banks, a refusal to buy on credit, a refusal to write a check, a refusal to use your credit card, a refual to particpiate, in the Banks corporate capitalism, a refusal to accept late fees, or over draft fees that make the banks billions, there are many hundreds of unconscious acts, that we all do daily that support our own slavery, all of these can be resisted, but the biggest one is resisting the idea that we are alone and powerless against them…

It’s nice to see Hedges climb out of his ain’t-it-awful mode. The upcoming event in Union Square is probably going to be well worth your attendance and support. An excellent date, Tax Day, has been chosen, since the BoA doesn’t pay taxes, unlike ordinary citizens.

Besides participating in this event, there are indeed other steps you can take; for instance, you can look into moving your money out of traditional banks and into credit unions which you control.

I am less hopeful about using traditional party politics. The Democrats will be working night and day to head off and capture this movement, just as they headed off and captured the anti-war movement (for a while). Third parties are going to be susceptible to the same corrupting influences as the major parties. However, if you believe the Democrats can be reformed or the Greens or someone else can replace them, go to it. Now is the time to be organizing for 2012.

Don’t expect the mainstream media to report this event truthfully, if they report it at all. If you have a camera, if you can write, you can report it yourself. Create your own media.

@Bubba: You are correct. However, I have to take
issue with all these people who love to point out the
necessity for a viable option to the system we have
now. For decades there have been people yelling from
the mountain tops about a plethora of options to the
corrupt and grossly simplistic system of economics we
have in this country. In other words, alternatives
abound, but many people constantly sit on the
sidelines pointing out how nothing will work, while
the people go on being systematically raped and
pillaged for profit.
@thebeerdoctor: If you think the “throw the bums
out” theory is anything but an opiate for the dumbed
down masses, you have not been paying attention.
@ardee: Great point. However, he is not overlooking
it. He is merely spending his energy speaking about
what REALLY needs to happen NOW, not years from now.
Sure we need a 3rd, 4th, and in my opinion 5th and
6th party, with actual proportional representation.
But let’s face it, we don’t have a democracy in this
country, so we cannot expect to have truly democratic
races. What has to be challenged first and foremost
is the ruling elite, and that cannot - by design - be
challenged by again, “voting the bums out”. We need
to kick the bums out on their greedy sorry asses, and
by sheer force of number, make their machine
inoperable. Then, and only then, will be able to
institute a real democratic election system in
America.

“I” got to love the vitriol directed at me because “I” dare questioned the motives of their heroic essayist, Chris Hedges. If hurling personal insults helps to ease your conscience, by all means have at it.
I don’t want to burst anybody’s civil disobedient balloon but history has revealed that provocateurs actually do exist. As someone who has been seriously jailed for political protest in this life, “I” can say from experience it is not the heroic noble action that people believe. Being locked in a room with eight police proceeding to take turns kicking you on the floor is not desirable, unless you are pretending to be Jesus.
Civil disobedience invites misconduct from the police. For the poor, who do have the luxury to go out and demonstrate, police brutality is an every day fact of life.
As the late Fela Kuti said: I must look and laugh.

Protest needs to include; worker strikes, carefully spending your money such that it doesn’t feed the broken system, and refusing to pay taxes. Otherwise, protest is not being taken seriously. Obama barely gave Wisconsin protesters consideration.

And for those unlikely or unable to attend this protest, consider making a far more mild act of resistance; register with the Green Party or another 3rd party of your choice. I believe that the time has come to abandon the Democratic Party en masse. While this will certainly lead to short term gains for the Republicans, it is the type of shock therapy that this country needs to break our corporate duopoly.

There will always be people who disagree with you. Has it occurred to you that not one of us has ever seen you make a case for your own views, less the whining and the tantrums about how others view the world?

A child will often succumb to the pulling desire to tear others down in order to elevate themselves. Children do this before they understand there’s a better way.

You are so very desperate to be heard you fail to conduct yourself as an adult with adult views to share.

kerryrose, I think it’s great that you’re going to be there. I wish I could be, too. Thanks for doing your part to eradicate the malignant cancer that is Bank of America, and I hope those selfish assholes stand up and take notice.

While history plainly shows that civil disobedience is a powerful tool for change I would offer that Hedges overlooks an equally powerful tool, in my own opinion.

Establishment of third party politics is a necessary step to those of us who see our system as salvageable. With the obvious selling out of the Democrats to corporate interests coupled with the stalemates created by recalcitrant Repubicans and increasingly radical elements usurping that party I believe that a small group of third party progressives in Congress can make a much larger impact than one might otherwise expect.

I do not seek to quibble with those who choose reformation of the Democratic Party as their own personal goal, as long as they actually make the attempt. Speaking of attempts,BeerDoctor , I would offer the citing of an apt Shakespearean quote referencing..“what would be lost by fearing the attempt”. Hedges, despite your criticism, has practiced what he now preaches, including getting arrested recently. His call is not, as you seem to infer, an urging for others to man the barricades, but a call to join him there.

I have no desire to get into a pissing contest with thebeerdoctor; obviously I would be disadvantaged because of his apparent mass consumption. Thebeerdoctor is too pitiable to be hated, but he is thoroughly disgusting. His self-centered emphasis on “I” rather than “We” is a quintessential example of the new American reality, and demonstrates why the heroic actions of Hedges and others may turn out to be a noble act of futility. Thebeerdoctor reminds me of the cowardly townspeople who, out of cowardice, fail to come to the aid of the hero in a western movie who is trying to protect them from the bad guys. As long as thebeerdoctor has his beer, he’ll be happy to live under tyranny; and to hell with everybody else. Thebeerdoctor is a sad and pathetic iconoclast who is as responsible for tyranny as the tyrants themselves.

I always heard Bank of America is run by the Jesuits—it certainly was of Italian-immigrant foundation…I think Chris, like a lot of us, is frustrated…Liberals and Progressives are frustrated—Goldman-Sachs, for instance, has been around since the 1850s—controls and regulations never stopped them in the past, nor will they in the future. It is the same old game—the Rich versus the Poor—and always in that struggle, the poor lose. The only way a protest against these behemoths is to “throw the bums out”—out of political office that is—but, you have to remember, 85% of Americans are very ignorant and afraid people and they are especially afraid of rich people. Americans have been taught that rich people are successful because they are smarter than us average bears. In even the little burgs of Middle America, a rich man is highly respected and vaunted; while that burg’s poor are chastised—you see, G.W. Bush said the Neo-Con idea (to drive us down to the bottom) was that this is a country of rugged individualism in which to succeed, you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps (the way the Bush Family pulled themselves up, one assumes) and not depend on the government for anything except continuing our reckless wars and keeping our rich people in profitable situations whether by hook or crook (we are a Capitalist nation and Capitalism is fraught with fraud)—you see the snideness in this game? We have coming up in 2012 the most expensive presidential election in world history—Obama himself has said he will need 1 Billion dollars (that’s a billion with a capital B)for his campaign and he has already started off his campaign with a $30,000-a-plate social affair—WHERE? Why in Harlem, the once Black haven now being turned into a White real estate investment scheme (White Americans are all basically racists—hey, beer guzzler, challenge me on that one)—driving Blacks out of New York City—I agree with the beer guzzler above that, yes, whether you like Chris Hedges or not, he makes his profits selling books and getting published—yet, he is right in saying the American people have to wake up to this fraudulent situation that is taking over the wealth of all nations not just the USA. And, by the bye, 400 and some-odd banks will fail this year. Check it out: Wachovia is now Wells Fargo. The way to put Wells Fargo out of business is to hold up their stage coaches and take the money boxes.

Despite the nobility of his stated intentions, you have to question whether Hedges call for overt public resistance might actually serve as a convenient way for the corporate state to catalog for identification, all those deemed undesirable and a threat to a system the privileged elite hold so dear.
I do not know how responsible it is to be an advocate for others to challenge corporate fascist policies. If you are upset about the abundant injustices of this world and feel inclined to protest visibly, by all means do so, but to ask others to follow that same course?
I have to admire Hedges use of the word “we”. “We don’t need more diatribes on the Internet”... strange that he would write such a thing, since that seems to be his weekly stock in trade.“We need you to walk down to your Bank of America branch and protest.”... First off I have been in a Bank of America branch, never done business there and never will. But you have to love that “we” spoken like a directive from some central committee. The BS detector goes off when someone starts using the word “we” like “we are the change we have been waiting for”.
Chris Hedges takes pride in his literary grounding. So it comes as little surprise that verbal devices such as “They greedily devour the entrails of the nation in a quest for profit,” become certifiable red meat for his legion of fans on Truthdig. They too, along with the former New York Times foreign reporter, suffer the arrows of outrageous misfortune.
But that is all. Until “I” start to live my life outside the dictates of media, with its never ending desire to increase technology, for the sake of further profit, then “I” will be a captive prisoner of all the nonsense that Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street continuously manufacture.
Which reminds me that those with an overarching political concern, whatever the viewpoint, seem to evolve into beings totally devoid of any sense of humor. Even their God becomes a gloomy Gus.

Great article! Good luck with your protest. Banks need to pay for the destruction of civil
society. One thing though, UK Uncut is not the Brit version of US Uncut. It’s the other
way around! Hopefully the US won’t be the only country to join the uncut movement. Im
looking at you Canada